Saturday, December 17, 2011

Juice Feast: Days 1 and 2 + Menu!

Right now, it's early afternoon on day two, and I'm sipping on this:

That is a juice made from green grapes, celery, cucumbers, and several ounces of local cilantro I got at the farmer's market this morning. It was SO GREEN I had to take a picture of it! Making juice has actually been pretty simple. It's not as much of a chore to juice with the Vitamix and a strainer bag, since I only have to wash the bag and the pitcher when I'm done, and I don't need to break down a whole juicer several times a day. However, after this morning's juice, I'm going to use my citrus juicer for my oranges from now on. Orange pulp doesn't work very well with the juicing bag.

I'm feeling better today, but yesterday was not so great. I usually have either a green juice or an orange juice for breakfast, so my body didn't get the whole "juice feasting" memo until halfway through the day, and by evening, I was feeling fuzzy around the edges and I was tired a lot earlier than normal. Went to bed at 9:30 and slept until 7:30 this morning. I went out to the farmer's market and got 3 huge bunches of cilantro about the size of my five year old's head, a big bunch of kale, a big bunch of yellow chard, 3 heads of celery, 6 pounds of carrots, and 20 pounds of oranges. Add to that my stash of cucumbers and apples at home, and I should be good for another few days.

This really isn't that hard. With some other fasts and cleanses, hunger is a big stumbling block, but I feel so full of juice all the time that I'm not craving anything else. My Cron O Meter nutrient scores are unbelievable. I get more nutrition by lunchtime than I was getting in a whole day before, and I was getting some pretty high scores even then.My high mineral intake is knocking cravings right out of the park.

I'm eating three meals a day, and each meal is roughly 500 calories worth of produce, so there's no chance I'm even close to starving myself. In fact I actually went a little bit over Cron O Meter's caloric intake recommendation yesterday. Win.

For those of you interesting in planning out a full cleansing schedule, here's mine. It might change over time as my needs change, but my overall framework goes something like this:

In between meals: herbal infusion made with herbs to support blood, lymph, kidney and liver cleansing

2 pm: 1 + quarts of juice

In between: more herbal tea

6 pm: 1 + quarts of juice

Before bed: 2 ounces of Aloe juice in water

I'm also drinking purified water throughout the day. It might seem like overdoing it, but it's actually very important to keep drinking plenty of water even though everything I'm eating has been juiced.

With day 2 halfway over, I'm feeling pretty confident about my ability to continue until Christmas Day. However, if I remember correctly, it wasn't until day 4 or 5 before I started to get into some deep cell detox, so I'm going to enjoy this easy going feeling while it lasts and get some more holiday presents put together.